the snapping point
it's BIGGER THAN BEFORE
Meatspace is Lora and Sarah’s weekly digest of weird/wack/need-to-know tech news — and our warm takes on all of it.
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Dear friends,
It is with no joy that we tell u that a GOP senator proposed a bill that would ban Snapchat snap streaks.
(Big shoutout to Lora’s mom for first alerting us to this news - she obviously delivered this message via a selfie on snapchat.)
To be fair, it sounds like this bill came from a good place: Rep Josh Hawley of MO is concerned that “big tech embraces addiction as a business model,” which, not no! In addition to the snap limitations, he also wants to end continuous scroll on other apps and curb gamification.
But this weird bandaid solution highlights once again how those who legislate tech often have a foggy understanding of how ppl use it/how it works/how to fix it. He’s not wrong that the addiction model is cursed! But, as the president/ceo of the Internet Association said in response to this bill, policies “must be evidence-based.” Boom.
This informative twitter thread from Shoshanna Weissmann breaks down the ways that the restrictions that Hawley’s bill wants to enforce are arbitrary and would have far-reaching consequences, messing with user experiences on sites from Twitter to Duolingo. Don’t take our gorgeous owls from us we must learn basic sentences in French!
MARIANNE MEME
Okay speaking of politics, Marianne Williamson has quickly become a darling of ironic millennial twitter.
And of this guy, who has been spray painting stencils of her face around NYC.
But we sense a backlash coming, and for good reason. We appreciate that she made some good points abt reparations in this week’s debate, and that she’s dropping truths about environmental racism and dark psychic forces. But also has said some wack shit previously! For example that one could cure things like cancer and AIDS with the power of magical thinking. As this Vox piece entitled “Marianne Williamson isn’t funny. She’s scary.” points out, Williamson has called depression a scam and has called mandatory vaccinations “Draconian” and “Orwellian.”
Colbert went in on Williamson, too.
Just to spread the dunks out a little, reminder that Kamala Harris had a hand in putting Lil Kim in prison. Andrew Yang’s answer to climate change is to give people money so they can escape it. Our current president asks his staffers to print out tweets he likes so he can sign them. Sometimes he frames them.
And Joe Biden is, we regret to inform u, no Rihanna.
CLAW IS LAW
Remember La Croix Boi? Now there is **Drinks White Claw Once** boy.
Sales of seltzer, with its fat-free pastel normcore possibly-teeth-enamel-eroding appeal, have been booming. But spiked seltzer has become the preferred bev of bros, according to this Business Insider piece. It’s lighter than an IPA, and ripe for Icing (the game where you force people to drink a Smirnoff Ice which was invented by a frat in 2010, according to lore. Never forget “guy who proposed while down on one knee getting iced.” Brave!)
Do bros like cold water that tastes like vodka and goes flat very quickly more than the rest of us, or do they just get more attention for it bc they “love sharing things they think are fun,” as White Claw’s senior marketing VP said? Who knows!! We only know that hard seltz was the fastest growing bevy category on Fourth of July weekend, and that by 2021, it’s predicted to be worth 2.5 bil in market share!!
Tho we are not bros per se we love hard seltzer and other canned alcs because they are cheap yet fancy, as Amanda Mull writes.
BABY MAMA
Millennials are having fewer babies than their parents. But the babies they do have will have softer butts than ever!! A Wall Street Journal article describes the lengths to which diaper manufacturers are going to make their products stand out, including tracking baby sleep cycles but also providing the original function of diapers in a more expensive way.
Hopefully it will help the baby will grow up, and like this egg featured in a how-to Facebook video, be Bigger Than Before.
DASHING
Doordash’s valuation is nuts:
And it just acquired rival fancy-ish food delivery service Caviar for $410 million! We have never used Caviar, but Lora applied to be a delivery person (Caviar courier, if you will) in 2015 before deciding that this was like not a good plan. Minteresting to see another large tech company munching up its competitors!
Facebook antitrust energy………but we digress!
After backlash from customers that came partly in response to this man-on-the-ground account of delivery biking, Doordash is (finally!) changing its tipping model that ripped off its delivery workers.
BONUS FOOD CONTENT: Jack likes Eggos
TASTY BITES
Eep the NYPD has been adding teens and children to facial recognition databases with little oversight (NYTimes)
Chance the Rapper is a wife guy (Twitter)
Burning Man is the best place to fundraise for MDMA legalization lol (Bloomberg)
There’s a new book by Gretchen McCulloch about the way we talk on the internet! Peep: “Because Internet” (NYTimes)
Your phone has a list of the places u go the most!! This sounds obvious but it’s actually wild. (OneZero)
Pinterest wants to help u b calm (Wired)
The artist behind no like counts (OneZero)
TWEET OF THE WEEK:
Yours in eroding competition,
Sarah and Lora